Adjustments for a 3 person party

[DragonBaneDM]

Hi there!

I'm gonna build a module soon (or maybe just adjust Kobold Hall, who knows!) that's designed to introduce three of my coworkers into both 4th edition and DnD.

Right now there's just the four of us with me DMing. Having a fourth player come in (we're gonna play at the school we work at so it'd have to be another staff member) is difficult but not totally out of the question.

BUT if that doesn't happen I'd like to know which one of these options you think is best:

1. Adjust the crunch of encounters to fit 3 players. I'd need help with this if anyone can point me in the right direction for XP budgets.

2. Add a companion character to fill whatever role they need. Currently a Bard is the only thing guaranteed.

Comments? Questions? Complaints? Bad jokes? War stories?

[Inevitability]

If we ignore the fact that Kobold Hall isn't one of the most balanced 4e adventures...

5 level 1 characters are expected to handle encounters with a cumulative XP value of 500 easily. 3 level 1 characters should be able to handle 300 XP worth of monsters.

For tough fights, this amount improves to 375 or 450.

Or, to put it in practice, I recommend changing the encounters to the following:

Encounter 1: Remove two of the kobolds, chosen as you see fit.

Encounter 2: You could remove 2 kobolds to give the PC's an 'easy prey' feel, remove both traps for a more straightforward battle, or remove 1 of both.

Encounter 3: Remove both drakes.

Encounter 4: Difficult... I'd remove a dragonshield, a slinger, and the pet drake.

Encounter 5: Hm... I'd advise you to find the Wyrmling White Dragon stats in the Monster Vault book and replace the dragon here with those. You keep the 'RAWR DRAGON BATTLE' feel, but now the encounter won't be deadly.

[Geoff]

I'd like to know which one of these options you think is best:

1. Adjust the crunch of encounters to fit 3 players. I'd need help with this if anyone can point me in the right direction for XP budgets.

2. Add a companion character to fill whatever role they need. Currently a Bard is the only thing guaranteed.
I'd say 1.

2, if you're an experienced DM or have at least one particularly capable player can work. You build the companion character to fill the missing role (which it will do modestly) and either run it in addition to the monsters as DM, or give it to a player to run in addition to his own character. As DM, you still build & run full-strength encounters. You can see how that's a bit more effort.

1. You just reduce the number or levels of monsters to stay inside the reduced exp budget. The result should be easy-enough encounters that being short a role shouldn't be fatal. As you get to know the game and the party's capabilities better, you can try harder encounters.

[Tegu8788]

XP budget for you. (http://newbiedm.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/xp-budget-chart.jpg)

[Yakk]

Cut 1/3 of the minions (remove 1 minion for every 3 there are) (round cut minions down).

Halve monster HP (so they start at "bloodied" and become bloodied at healing surge value).

Optionally start players at level 2.

The half monster HP is worth ~+50% encounter budget.
+1 level is worth +25% encounter budget.

So that places you at the encounter budget of 5.6 level 1 characters. Ie, you can run a standard level 1 encounter with those characters.

If your characters are expected to be pretty optimally built (do they check builds on the 'net?), then keep them at level 1 (budget of a 4.5 member level 1 party).

Traps may need more tweaking. Wing it.

[Havelocke]

I have had a similar problem. I was the DM running a game with 3 players, none of which had any experience. I found that filling the missing gap with an NPC a level or two higher as a "mentor/guide" worked well. In this party they had no leader, so it was easy for me to make a dedicated healer cleric who was light on fighting potential to buff the party and keep them breathing while they did the hard work. In a pinch a bit of "divine intervention" occurred. I would also suggest providing them with extra health potions to start with and possibly give them perks to hit with, maybe they could have a masterwork weapon (+1 to hit), or some other minor magic item, or even a follower/companion animal that could fight with them (Wolf, bear, mountain lion, eagle, owl, whatever...not too powerful)